Windows 10: Issues w/clean install on legacy machine (Dell Precision M4600)

So we've just had a coronavirus scare in the household and my to-do list is starting to look more like a bucket list. Our aberrantly lumpy-headed governor is handling things pretty well, but our healthcare system was horrible before this and hurricane season is approaching.

I want my computer back up and running before I die. Specs are here.

Background: The machine came with a HDD; I should have replaced it with a SSD immediately but didn't; the HDD died; the retailer/refurbisher replaced the HDD with another that may not have the same drivers; I finally bought and installed a SSD.

I did a clean install of 1909 x64 and then ruined it completely by turning off airplane mode to download some drivers. In less than 5 minutes, Windows crammed 2 Candy Crush games onto my machine and did a triple install of some NVIDIA dashboard crap.

Additionally: I swear I downloaded the Win7 x64 touchpad driver, but I ended up with the XP/2000/Vista driver installed instead.

Then the start menu's search option stopped working. Completely. For no discernable reason.

For the love of god and all that is holy, HELP.

(1) I'm gonna do another clean install; it's not like there's any data to lose. The first time around I used a burned DVD and ran into (what I think) is a bug: the machine didn't recognize the installation media when I tried to boot from the CD/DVD drive; I had to change the boot order. I'm going to try a known-to-work USB stick and see if the booting weirdness persists.

(2) Is this still the best/only way to stop advertising shenanigans? How Windows 10 Pro installs unwanted apps (Candy Crush) and how to stop it – Daniel's IT Blog

(3) My user experience would be best enhanced by Windows not randomly sending my goddamn private data to Microsoft. I want telemetry off. Completely. I don't care if I have to manually enter 200 IP addresses into a 3rd-party firewall.

(4) Privacy/security settings -- do I seriously have to spelunk through five million submenus? If so, can someone point me at a checklist?

(5) Back to #2 -- does Windows do anything else like this, and how do I stop it? It seems to like disabling the "notify me before installing updates" setting.


Let me know if any of this is unclear; I've been pretty out of it today, but I don't want to put this off any longer.

Thanks.

:)

 

Windows 10 and Dell Precision M4600 - lock up issues

I did the upgrade to Windows 10 on my Dell Precision M4600 (twice) and both times I was having lockups after all the upgrades were complete. Dell states that the M4600 is not tested for Windows 10 but the upgrade adviser says it is compatible.

Anyone else have this issue? Any support?

 

Windows 10 and Dell Precision M4600 - lock up issues

Hi, Thanks for the information. What BIOS version are you running on your Dell Precision M4600? (I am running A16.)

 

Windows 10 and Dell Precision M4600 - lock up issues

I have M4600 with i7-2720QM and 4+8GB (12GB)RAM, GPU=Quadro 1000M, BIOS=A16 and I upgraded to 10 by moving an existing SSD install of Win 10 from older laptop to the M4600 laptop. However, hibernate does NOT work and I had an issue with msconfig not detecting
more than 2 cores and more than 8GB ram (despite it being Win10-64-bit). So, I just copied over a new config file and let win10 detect new HW on the M4600 - working Ok now apart from Dell System Monitor trying to consume all the RAM - doing a clean install
now of Windows 10 - need me to let you know how it goes?